Consequences of four decades of attacks on our government
Between 1933 and 1980, the federal government put together the efforts that tamed the Great Depression, won World War II, created a network of international organizations that maintained stability for more than 50 years, rebuilt Europe, developed and produced the atomic bomb, built the hydroelectric dams like Bonneville and Grand Coulee, explored the universe, developed the Internet, fought and won the Cold War, eliminated many dreaded childhood diseases, built the interstate highway system, put a man on the moon and brought him home safely, brought electricity to rural parts of America, and built the St. Lawrence Seaway. Oh, I know, you’re going to say, “Hey, Rockwell International and Grumman built the equipment that put the man on the moon.” But it was the federal government that put those efforts together.
The federal government also established national centers of expertise in medical research, diplomacy, intelligence and law enforcement, agricultural research, and many other areas. It has been popular to deride government employees as lazy bureaucrats or deep state, but they are the top people in their field and we rely on them for weather forecasts, disaster relief, protection of national parks and forests, climate change research, control of infectious diseases, management of Social Security and Medicare, investigating crime, and making sure people pay their taxes.
The federal government also established numerous organizations that were the international gold standard for accumulation and analysis of data on labor force, disease, population, weather, economic activity, agriculture, and many other topics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census, NOAA, CDC, and other agencies provide the basis for us to understand our world. Nobody invested in a new factory, planted a crop, planned a new school or subdivision, or planned a family picnic without relying on federal statistics. We would not have weather forecasts or the means to control an Ebola pandemic, or air travel, or safe food and water, without “federal bureaucrats.”
The attacks on the “Deep State” aren’t a new thing. It started with resistance in the south to civil rights legislation and George Wallace’s famous derisive comments about “pointy headed federal BYOO-ruh-krats” and continued through Reagan’s contemptuous comment that “government is always the problem.”
But these attacks, over time, have led to a serious erosion In capabilities. Virtually all of the services mentioned in this article come in the category of “non-defense discretionary spending.” (The other categories are ‘defense” and mandatory spending such as social security and Medicare.) Non-defense discretionary spending has declined from nearly 10% of GDP in 1970 to roughly 3% today.
Federal capabilities have also suffered from ideological attacks that have cut funding and hamstrung agencies that are unpopular with some special interest, such as ATF, IRS, civil rights enforcement, the EPA, food safety inspection, national parks, and the Census.
The Trump administration has brought these capabilities to a new low. Continuing budget cuts and assigning leadership of agencies to industry lobbyists hostile to the agency’s mission have virtually eliminated some capabilities. Most agencies now have been thoroughly politicized. We are now seeing regular White House interference in routine agency functions and retaliation against civil servants who don’t loyally support the president. These actions have consequences. For example, we learned recently that intelligence officials don’t brief the president on anything about Russia or anything else that night make him angry. Imagine If nobody had told FDR about Pearl Harbor because they knew he might get angry and have them fired.
Cuts In safety inspections make our food less safe. Cuts in the IRS mean tax cheats don’t get caught. Turning new airplane certification over to the manufacturer led to the 737 MAX fiasco and has threatened the survival of US airliner production. Repeated political interference in the Census could give us an inaccurate count and, if the Trump administration is successful, give a permanent electoral advantage to red states.
Today we are facing four great emergencies – an international crisis of confidence in the United States, the Corona virus, the cratering of the economy, and the broad problem of systemic racism. We don’t have a coherent plan for any of then. And we have created a federal capability almost perfectly configured to mishandle any emergency. We’ve seen the results of a president completely unsuited to the job, who has basically decided we don’t need allies, that he can bully the pandemic away and sweet talk the economy back to full employment, and that the solution to systemic racism is to have more militarized police arrest and tear gas more people. We have also seen the consequences of interference and bullying the federal workforce: agencies such as CDC that repeatedly modify or delay their guidance, agencies whose capability has eroded so severely that they’re marginally competent to carry out their mission. It will be the work of decades to rebuild the essential functions we rely on.
Leon Reed is a former congressional aide and is the author or co-author of five books on military history. He is the chair of Gettysburg Democracy for America and its Government Accountability Task Force.